Dave Craven: Huddersfield on the verge of ending 81 years of heartache

They certainly do not need any reminding of it.

Coach Paul Anderson bristles at the merest mention of previous campaigns where vast promise has eventually resulted in vast nothingness.

All of that was not on his watch, of course, and this is a new “Huddersfield Giants 2013” rightly charging onwards and raising hopes once more.

But, similarly, the club is no doubt also sick of hearing that they were not great in the winter era either, having not actually lifted the league title since 1962.

JFK was still around back then trying to sort out the Cuban missile crisis, it was also the year Marilyn Monroe died while, a little closer to home, Ipswich Town won the First Division title in their first season at elite level.

However, though it has now been fully 51 years since Tommy Smales last raised the Championship for the Fartowners, they did not actually finish first that season.

Dave Valentine’s side came fourth and from that lowest of play-off positions successfully strived to reach the Championship final – long before Old Trafford’s Super League Grand Final was introduced as “innovative” – to defeat a star-studded Wakefield who had broken their hearts, if not spirit, at Wembley just seven days earlier.

Equally so, when prolific Australian Pat Devery captained them to the narrowest of victories in the 1949 final, they had again not finished in pole position.

Instead, they beat actual league leaders Warrington 13-12 in front of a record crowd of 75,194 at Manchester City’s Maine Road.

So, with a little help from the club historian, it emerges Huddersfield have not rounded off a season at the top of the pile since... 1932.

Yes, one of the sport’s founder members and indeed the birthplace of rugby league have not had a team round off at the summit in more than 80 years.

Ironically, the Claret and Gold went on to lose that Championship final to second-placed St Helens but it just underlines the enormity of what they could now achieve.

Though tonight’s game at Wigan will not secure the League Leaders’ Shield, victory for Anderson’s men would certainly be a huge step towards doing so.

It would leave the leaders three points ahead of Wigan with just three to go and Huddersfield’s run-in is clearly the most favourable with games at London and Bradford sandwiching a home tie with Wakefield.

Wigan, meanwhile, must head to France the week before the Challenge Cup final and then host their Wembley opponents, Hull FC, in the league just six days after that showpiece.

Champions Leeds Rhinos then visit on the last day in a game that could be just as keenly anticipated as tonight’s DW Stadium contest.

Admittedly, third-placed Warrington – level on 35 points with Wigan just a point behind Huddersfield – could still take the crown with encouraging home games against Wakefield and Widnes before tough trips to St Helens and Perpignan.

However, the chance is undoubtedly there for Giants, who have already beaten Wigan this term, to confirm their current status as the best team in the land. It will take nerve and guile while, having slipped up alarmingly in their abject Challenge Cup semi-final loss to Warrington, nagging concerns about whether they truly have the mettle to do it reared once more.

Personally, though, I think they are the strongest Huddersfield side yet of this summer era – physically and mentally – and they will emerge in that No1 slot.

In a revived age where the champions tag only comes with Grand Final glory, the lambasted League Leaders’ Shield has often been labelled the ‘Hubcap’.

For sides like Wigan, with their record 19 league titles, you can see how it would matter little.

But for Huddersfield, and their barren run, it would for once certainly be worth celebrating.